I'm not sure what you are saying. My point is that it could be argued (and I believe Harold Demsetz has made a similar argument against radical neoclassicals employing the L/LP distinction) that for each specific act of concrete labor, the worker can choose whether to "exchange" his concrete labor for the wage (of course, this may carry some legal penalty for breaking the contract). Is this correct? Does it contradict the idea that LP is what is sold?
> On 7/8/06, Walt Byars <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>It is obvious that when an employer and worker make a contract (in > the realm of C in Marx's famous schema) the contract doesn't specify > the concrete labor to be performed, it just says the parameters within > which the boss will direct the worker. This seems like a classic case > of the sale of LP. < > > yes, if by "C" you mean the initial stage of the market purchase of > labor-power (and material inputs) by the capitalist. > >>But what if someone argued that in the realm of P [the production > process], we were still implicitly in the realm of exchange because > for every act of concrete labor workers were asked to perform, they > had the power to weigh that against the wage they were paid. Thus, the > wage is really payment for specific acts of concrete labor? < > > I don't think this makes sense. There are all sorts of external > effects (positive and negative) on all other labors that arise from > each worker's labor. The individual contribution of any worker to the > firm's revenues cannot be separated out from those of others, except > in the the idealized world of most neoclassical models. Further, there > are too many information problems to tell what kind of effort each > worker is making. > -- > Jim Devine / "It was the mystical dogma of Bentham and Adam Smith and > the rest, that some of the worst of human passions would turn out to > be all for the best. It was the mysterious doctrine that selfishness > would do the work of unselfishness." -- G. K.Chesterton. >
